‘kamoshiranei’ in Japanese has mainly been studied in the field of modality research as a semantic component of sentences. However, it has not been explicitly explained about the nature of cognition as a epistemic modality and its pragmatic functi...
‘kamoshiranei’ in Japanese has mainly been studied in the field of modality research as a semantic component of sentences. However, it has not been explicitly explained about the nature of cognition as a epistemic modality and its pragmatic function. In this paper, I use Coates(1983)’s ‘Principle of Inviolability of Epistemic Modality’ as a methodology, and it is examined the properties as ‘epistemic modality’.
The properties of ‘kamoshiranei’ as ‘epistemic modality’ are as follows.
First, ‘kamosiranei’ cannot mean the past.
Second, ‘kamoshiranei’ is not included in the scope of the subjective mode.
Third, ‘kamoshiranei’ is not included in the scope of the question.
Also, in the previous researches, there were indications that ‘kamosirenai’ weakened the power of utterance, expressed the possibility, and expressed the politeness. In this article, it is explained that this property is functioning as hedge. Because hedge has the function to weaken the illocutionary force through the speaker conveying limited assurance about the proposition.